Looking Glass
by whitesakura
Summary: The things unseen. The things untold. The things not yet come. A series of drabbles or short pieces dedicated to X1999 and Tokyo Babylon.
1. Gifts

Gifts

Hokuto-chan is the new heir. Her mother and father told her so. She has something Sumeragi-sama calls "potential" and an "innate gift." Her brother plays outside while she chants until her throat is hoarse; she wonders if she can give the gift back.

There's an empty vial that sits on her uncle's desk. She asks what it is and Subaru smiles bitterly and calls it a "novelty."

Hokuto-chan is the new heir. She has "potential," an "innate gift," and "clairvoyance." There's a vial full of secrets on her uncle's desk, and Hokuto wants to keep her gifts after all.


	2. Augury

Augury

It's like falling off the edge of the world, like plunging into a mystery headfirst, like breaking the surface of an icy sea, gasping for breath.

The storm is wild and wicked. From the porch, Fuuma wrinkles his nose in disgust at the Outside, then smiles when he spots Kamui and Kotori by the portable heater, warming their hands. Kotori is leaning against Kamui where their futons are pressed together. When the lightning flashes, they scramble underneath the blankets.

Fuuma remains standing. He watches over them like an immovable monolith, charting the destiny of the stars.


	3. Stone

Stone

He dresses in black. Even his eyes are dull, oiled pieces of obsidian. They reflect only transient things. In the park, a little girl holds a bouquet of flowers. She passes by him like a thousand before her. Like a thousand after. This girl comes up to him, adorns a rose in his hair like one would garner an idol on feast day. Her mother watches warily.

"Smile, Ni-san!" The girl says, darting away.

The wind follows her staccato footsteps, taking the blossom away. Subaru's fingers twitch in a voiceless plea.

Red lingers like Seishirou's heart, dying in his hand.


	4. Break the Cycle

Break the Cycle

First there is haziness, but abruptly, there is sound, color, motion, an obstacle. He rushes towards the pane of glass, pounds until his gloved hands are sore. The voices speak lowly on the other side, but he can hear both of them. Cadences of circumstance, fate, always the same song, always the same inflections. At last, Hokuto makes that half-afraid smile and it's like a held breath, a pause in continuity. Then Seishiro's face twists cruelly and there's a noisy shattering, too late, under his arms, time moving too fast, blood on him and blood on his dying sister who's reaching, reaching, re-

Subaru screams and breaks his bathroom mirror.

Blood runs down the naked life-line of his palm and time lies in pieces, suspended all around him.


	5. Penalty

Penalty

Kamui didn't remember how many had become lost, starting from his own mother to Kotori and then the general populace of Japan. _Hysteria bubbled from bloodied mouths, transformed into quicksilver by the media._ When the Dragons of Earth began to attack the pivotal points of Tokyo, Kamui's team raced mindlessly to protect the sites. Love of humanity bound their souls and they could do nothing else. _The frightened people turned on each other._ It made Kamui laugh when he thought about it as his shinken sunk into Fuuma's chest.

Death was a spectator's sport, but everyone perished before the end.


	6. Evanescent

Evanescent

He used to change the painting that hung on his living room wall everyday. Still-lifes and landscapes made their brief debuts, then faded into obscurity as he studied for his veterinary license. On graduation day, he hung up an unknown portrait of a dark-eyed Icarus instead. He stood before the painting in his cap and gown. An hour ago, his professors had greeted him without the "kun" honorific that had dogged his name for years. Sakurazuka-san felt Icarus' frightened heart hammering in his hand. The sun-melted wax of false wings ran through his fingers like the grains of time, like the hours of his life.

It was time to find an heir.


	7. Home Remedy

Home Remedy

When Kazuki was ten years old, she slipped away from her grandfather while he was speaking to a colleague. She darted curiously around the laboratory. There were silent millipedes suspended in amber, a clicking mechanical device that looked like a glorified Swiss army knife, and way in the back behind meshed fencing, a strange tube full of bluish liquid that bubbled like a witch's broth. 

"Kazuki!"

Kazuki looked up into her grandfather's relieved face. "What's that?" she gestured at the tube. 

"Salvation," Grandfather said, scooping up her frail body with a secretive smile.

When Kazuki was ten, the cancer had only just begun to spread. When Kazuki was twelve, the world turned dark. When she woke again, the iridescent liquid was all around her and she no longer had her face or her name.

Nataku was greeted by Grandfather's frown.


	8. Cut

Cut

Subaru's first ofuda have choppy edges. They nick his forefinger. He immediately drops the piece of paper to suck on the red liquid budding like a dark jewel on his hand.

By fifteen, his ofuda are sheared neatly and orderly. Late at night, while Hokuto sleeps, inky stars on snow are allowed to dry and Subaru inspects his gloves for stains.

Subaru finger-paints dreamily. Liquid drops onto the sheaves and random spots are absorbed greedily by the black paper. Subaru's smile wavers as a thin crimson line runs down his skin.

The Sakurazukamori's ofuda are meant to have deadly edges.


	9. Circular

Circular

When Kakyou was small, he thought of roads that stretched into a blue sky. The butterflies stirred as he walked over swaying grass and the sunlight was warm on his skin.

One day, the dreams began. 

They crowded over the meadow, over the dirt, and finally over the sky, threatening and tense like lightning. Kakyou hid himself in dark rice-papered rooms, siphoned the dreams into a less vicious liquor. In that quiet part of the dreamscape that was his, he did his best to block out the world.

Then Hokuto showed him the blue ocean.

Then someone took it away.


	10. Summer Treat

Summer Treat

"Well, this is unusual," Seishirou says. The grounds of Ueno Park are covered in a mass of fluttering pink wings. A girl stands shock-still in the middle of the meadow while passer-bys whisper to each other. They point to the butterflies that begin to stir in the wind.

"She was too old to believe in sakura," Fuuma explains, slurping vanilla in the deep summer sun. "But still young enough to wish for it."

The trees are green and have long shed their delicate blossoms. Seishirou watches as the butterflies slowly take flight, rising higher and higher while the girl laughs. The Sakurazukamori looks down at the red on his hand and hesitates.

"It's quite wonderful," Seishirou says at last, licking the remains of a Cherry Jubilee off his fingers.


	11. Bond

Bond

He was too broad for tag, always rustling the gardenia bushes as he looked for a hiding place. The twigs snapped under his sneakers even when he tip-toed. When at last he received no more offers to play from the other kids, he sat down next to a hickory in the playground and angrily punched it. The tree cried, shedding green tears. Guiltily, Kusanagi laid wide, careful hands on the wound he had caused and murmured his apologies. Over the following days they became a common sight: a pair of scraggly shadows exchanging covert secrets, elongating with the sinking sun.


	12. Baptism

Baptism

The thing struggles in her fist and she can feel its heartbeat. Fast, frantic little thing throbbing against her cool palm. The man beside her stretches languorously like a slowly uncoiled spring against the tree. She concentrates and tightens her grip until its rhythm stutters and stops. She drops the feathered corpse into the pungent litter of sakura and the crimson from her digits follow it in a sluggish ooze. In Ueno Park, Seishirou smiles with teeth and tells Kazuki he is proud of her. She looks into his dark sunglasses and cannot find herself.

Only Nataku is reflected back.


End file.
